Malaysia's 'Kongsi Raya': Celebrating togetherness

Malaysia's 'Kongsi Raya': Celebrating togetherness

By Lim Pui Huen

The concept of Bangsa Malaysia gives Malaysians a new vision for the future.

No matter what the astrologers and feng shui masters say, most Malaysians feel that the Year of the Rat will be an auspicious one. By the fortuitous conjunction of the stars, Chinese New Year fell one day ahead of Hari Raya Idul Fitri. This coincidence of the most important annual festival of the two major races, they feel, can only augur well for the year ahead.

For the month of February and some time after, Malaysia was floating in an euphoria of muhibbah (goodwill). The double celebrations have produced a whole plethora of public symbols of goodwill and racial harmony as had never been seen before. Never before had goodwill been so openly expressed. Never before had racial harmony been so widely imprinted on the public awareness on a nationwide scale.

This phenomenon was a spontaneous response to what is, strictly speaking, a mere coincidence of the Moslem and Chinese calendars. Business organizations that normally send greetings to their Malay or Chinese clients at the appropriate festival, sent joint greetings in newspapers and on television. Government offices that generally only put up Hari Raya decorations on their buildings, put up Chinese New Year decorations also. Similarly, many Chinese shops and restaurants that usually only hang up Chinese decorations, hung up Hari Raya decorations.

These joint celebrations have produced an outburst of creative synergy as designers endeavored to capture the double celebration concept. These efforts at cross-cultural expression could be seen in hotels, shopping centers and public spaces all over Malaysia. The message of goodwill was also carried through television commercials, the most outstanding of which was the short feature called "Drums" commissioned by Marlboro. Through the use of music and dance, and a cast of hundreds, it vividly portrayed the spirit of cooperation between two vibrant cultures. A popular catchphrase Kongsi Raya was coined by combining the traditional greetings of gongxi facai and Selamat Hari Raya.

Many organizations and offices, including the Prime Minister's Department, held parties celebrating the double festivals. At the reception jointly hosted by the Malay Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Chinese Chambers of Commerce, Malaysia, Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad commented on the growing trust and understanding between Malays and Chinese which have produced a climate conducive to Sino-Malay cooperation.

The forces of globalization which have pushed countries towards closer economic integration have similarly given Malays and Chinese greater impetus to work together to keep Malaysia competitive. These efforts have paid off as Malaysia registered a 9.6 percent growth in GDP in 1995, thus maintaining the strong growth momentum of the last seven years. The growing pie has brought a share for everyone despite criticisms leveled at weaknesses in the distributive system.

The mood of kongsi raya is, therefore, based on the buoyant economy that Malaysia is currently enjoying. More importantly, however, the country has for the first time been given a vision of the future to which all Malaysians can subscribe.

This goal for the nation was first unveiled in February 1991, in a speech Dr. Mahathir delivered to the Malaysian Business Council. The speech, called Malaysia: The Way Forward, aims at advancing Malaysia to a fully developed country by 2020. However, it has since been popularly referred to as Vision 2020. Possibly because the speech was delivered before a business audience, Vision 2020 was defined in economic terms. In many ways, it was a restatement of Dr. Mahathir's key strategies of liberalization, deregulation, privatization, diversification and human resource development.

To ordinary Malaysian, however, Dr. Mahathir also offered a vision of the kind of society Malaysia can aspire to be, one that is: united, confident, democratic, moral and ethical, tolerant, forward looking, caring, economically just, and prosperous.

Above all, Dr. Mahathir articulated a vision of a "united Malaysian nation with a sense of common and shared destiny", to be made up of one Bangsa Malaysia (Malaysian race).

Surprisingly, while Vision 2020 is regularly invoked, the notion of Bangsa Malaysia seemed to have been overlooked until August 1995, when Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie took up the topic in a paper presented at the Institute of Islamic Understanding, Malaysia. Ghazali, whose views have been influential in shaping the concept of the Malaysian nation, pointed to the political, legal and constitutional implications of the idea.

This brought a clarification from Dr. Mahathir. Bangsa Malaysia, he explained, "means people who are able to identify themselves with the country, speak Bahasa Malaysia, and accept the Constitution." Malaysians should accept each other as they are regardless of race and religion. Since then, Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, the president of opposition party Semangat 46, has labeled the concept dangerous and vague.

Tengku Razaleigh's remarks illustrate that maintaining harmonious ethnic relations is an intricate process that requires constant nurturing. While ethnic problems are often discussed in terms of relations between Malays and Chinese, Malaysia is much more diverse than is generally realized. Besides the main groupings of Malay, Chinese and Indian, the 1991 census identifies 37 other categories of indigenous people. These categories may still be considered conservative following a report that there are some 83 ethnic groups in Sabah alone. Each of these groupings have their own set of issues which have to be handled in the light of their specific problems and needs as well as the larger national context.

In propounding a vision of the future with which all communities can identify, Dr. Mahathir has given Malaysians a common sense of purpose which they did not have before. In doing so, his stature has risen from that of politician to that of a statesman and visionary.

P. Lim Pui Huen is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and is Associate Editor of Trends.